Everyday use of written Cantonese in Hong Kong

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the usage of written Cantonese by different age groups in Hong Kong. The study was designed to test three hypotheses; (1) the younger generation prefers using written Cantonese to standard written Chinese as they are more open-minded to written Cantonese (Snow 2008); (2) females use standard written Chinese, which is a more conservative form of language more often than the males do (Bourgerie 1990) and (3) there is a high level of consensus on which characters to use when a Cantonese word can be represented by different characters (Snow 2008).

The study was conducted on 60 native speakers of Cantonese in Hong Kong from three age groups. They were asked to describe 10 pictures using any written language they like so that their preference of written code can be traced. Participants’ sentences were analyzed and categorized into different text styles following Snow (2004)’s classification. We found that (i) the youngest generation most frequently used written Cantonese and (ii) females use standard written Chinese more often than males do. The participants show some common preference in the use of characters when variants are available. However, there is a tendency that the younger generation adopts new strategies to represent Cantonese words and create new variants. These new variants are usually characters with fewer strokes.